Mankind: Endangered Species. So is Womankind.

Expansion of Clinics Shapes Bush Legacy

Really. I can't believe this piece of horse plop polishing in the recent New York Times. It almost seems like Prez Bush II must have had a favor or two to call in at the Times to get this published with a straight face.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for expansion of clinics and bringing health care to places it is most needed. Bravo, Mr. President!

So why is it that this wonderful news does not crowd out media reports of your attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act in a last-minute (ok, last-month) slash and burn directive from the good offices of your Presidency?

Yes, you have taken your last swipe at that darned Science, obviously the root of all evil for business development, for it is because those Scientists insist on reviewing the consequences of new construction on the biosphere. As if that should not matter.

I will not dwell on this subject, but I do want to point out to one and all why this is shortsighted. Why we should have an Endangered Species Act, and why such an act is of benefit to all of us.

The ultimate Endangered Species is humanity, mankind, whatever you choose to tag us with. How many mine canaries do we need to have fall over. stone dead and suffocated before we realize that we're working our way up to our own niche?

If there's anything that shapes your legacy in my mind, it is this rearguard abomination you've pulled. It's mostly window dressing anyway, since everything you've done is mercifully about to be reversed, starting with this miscarriage. Abort! Abort! What kind of lowlife President would want to make the destruction of critters, and by inference, the undoing of the biosphere we live in, his legacy? George II, we will remember you always!

Thank dog for friends

It would be hypocritical for me to thank God for friends, even if she were responsible, since I have spent vast expanses of my lifetime disbelieving. But friends are there to kick your perceptions back into line when they periodically drift over the line, like some long distance driver falling asleep at the wheel and traversing over the center stripe. I just re-read my rant about market capitalism, and have to admit I still feel pretty good about having identified the end of this cycle of rampant consumerism, destruction of resources and hollow lending that has done nothing but spiral the whole cycle upwards in a final surge that all but assures its destruction.

However, one must be careful when making conjectural statements, especially when dealing with friends who will actually parse them and consider each aspect of what you've laid down in print. OK, not print, virtual print. You've laid down a hieroglyphic trail of electrons that convey meaning to others. Whatever. Thinking people will react. And here's some of that reaction:

'. . .It is not necessary to have a growing population in order to have economic growth, nor is it necessary to plunder the planet's resources in some destructive fashion. And yes it is possible to keep lending to someone and expect full payment eventually, so long as that someone is making effective use of the credit to create more wealth (more additional wealth than could have been created without that credit).

Lending to an addict doesn't fall under that category. Pointing a finger at the futility of lending endlessly to an addict, and then generalizing the results of such lending to support an argument against market Capitalism is I think, one place where your logic unravels in this rant. Another is the bit about the manufacturing model being unsustainable. Efficient manufacturing is going to continue to be absolutely essential to the success of our efforts to turn around our problems.

You also lose me when you talk about money being loaned to/by China. By what mechanism has the entire planet sent its saving to China? By what mechanism has China put more money into the hands of (primarily) American consumers? The way I see it, foreign investment in Chinese manufacturing has been entirely voluntary, based completely on business decisions about cost of goods, and has resulted in substantial profits for those investors and for China. As for the Chinese loans to America (which HAS become a credit addict), who's more to blame for the consequences, the Chinese who have been buying US government issued securities, or the people squandering the borrowed money on programs that will in no way ever increase productivity here in America, thus helping to ensure that the debt will keep becoming ever more difficult to repay?

OK, I still say the current cycle is broken. Even tonight, as our pundits discuss the sinking of consumer confidence to the lowest level recorded since the beginning of the confidence survey, we are still reminded that 'consumerism makes up two-thirds of our economy.' Am I nuts in thinking this has to change? I think not. And when thinking about all the jobs in China that revolve around producing what amouts to worthless crap, I think all that has to go. I think the grand poobahs of China need to redefine the meaning of work just as badly as we need to rethink our patterns of behavior. True, it is not manufacturing per se that is obsolete; it is the creation of meaningless objects slated for planned obsolescence that is so obscene and unsustainable. Hooray to the new year. New thinking. New Plan. New President. Nu?

Low Marx for Market Capitalism

One of today's stories: that China will feel the sting of the current recession, because the bubble was built on credit that they facilitated through their manufacturing profits. With the recession and other economic displacements, they've actually made nothing; the future is bleak, and without endlessly feeding someone's consumerism with their savings, a market does not exist in sufficient size and strength to support all the factories and jobs they've created thanks to their profligate lending.

What does this really speak to? The futility, more or less, of manufacturing. It is true that we all need, or at least feel we can not live a civilized life without, the many physical items that surround us, be they toilets or iPods. Yes, we can survive despite them, but we can florish with them.

It is just that news items like the one above call into question many things. And one of those things is the very premise of our economic exchange.

Sadly, it seems that the only way our market capitalism can work is with an ever-growing population. If you (for the moment) put aside considerations like overcrowding and limited resources and global warming, why, this makes perfect sense! If you have ever-increasing demand for food, water, transport, housing, clothing and all the rest, you'll have the endless boom. And you'll justify manufacturing, for there will be an ever-expanding need for more products.

Now that we're done with this overly-rosy scenario, let's talk basics. One planet, one atmosphere, finite resources. It would seem to me that Houston, we have a problem. Several problems in fact.

The first one is that the ever-expanding model is broken. And if it was up to me, we'd keep it that way. It seems that the only way we've found to create what we call 'wealth' up to now involves massive destruction of the environment and the forced rape of Nature.

This can only go on so far. Or, in our case, a bit too far. It seems we may well have 'tipping-pointed' the environment into a warming spiral.

There is a solution that is multi-pronged. I am not holding my breath about any of the prongs, but here's the first one: go all out to stop over-population. Sure, we keep coming up with more ingenious ways to pack more people on to the planet without killing all of them, but is that really what we want, other than it pumps up the economic system? That would be a resounding, "NOT!"

Now that we've agreed to stop endlesly incrementing human density, the next problem is to re-model and re-form economic activity. The goal is to reward decisions that support a steady-state, sustainable planet, and to tax or penalize behaviors that consume resources unnecessarily and that imperil future survival.

That would mean a shift away from a manufacturing model. Right now the entire planet has sent its savings to China, which has invested on the one hand in more factories and on the other in putting more money into the hands of (primarily American) consumers, so they will buy Chinese goods and keep the good people of China employed. Nice concept, except there's a fallacy at the very heart of it; you can't keep extending credit indefinitely and still expect full payment at some time in the future. At some point you're simply lending money to a friend that you know is an addict. The hard work that created your savings will simply be snorted away. And looking back on the orgy of purchasing of 'cheap Chinese goods' that has gone on for a couple of decades, I think I hear the echo of a giant snort somewhere in the distance. Or is it in the room with me?

Here's where I get stupid, and I am hoping that one or more of the readers of this most essential rant will take it from here and provide the missing link. If, as I propose, the manufacturing model of economic activity is obsolete and out of step with Nature, how do you craft one based on sustainability and steady-state or shrinking population? Any and all proposals are welcome here. Regardless of whether we figure it out in advance, this is where we are all headed. If we can get on top of the game and channel the transition from our failed model to the next modality, we might just get there sooner. This is the dialogue I would welcome, but I have yet to hear word one of the discussion.

A Christmas To Remember? Strange Bookends

The Christmas season of 2008 opened with a rush, specifically, the stampede of manic Wal-Mart shoppers planting their hooves into one of the unfortunate employees charged with opening the front doors at five AM on one of our great commercial holidays, Black Friday. Not only was this poor man trampled to death, but a woman in the crowd with a child said she ran as best she could in the other direction as the crowd rushed the door as she realized that both her life and that of her child's were in peril. The news media also made light of the fact that shoppers continued to prowl and claw for bargains even as they stepped over the limp body of the trampling victim. This is why our enemies should fear us. If we can be this fanatic about another five percent off on a big screen TV, imagine if we ever actually had a righteous cause to fight for.

Now I am perfectly sure that this unfortunate overture to the holiday season did little to cloud the experiences of the average family. Many went about their shopping, gifting, wrapping and partying with nary a thought of the poor tramplee. I merely highlight it here to juxtapose it with the other bookend, namely the Santa Shooting and Burning Down the House with Family In It episode. Yes, Christmas Day was another media bonanza, a recently jobless man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, post-recent-.divorce destroys a covey of in-laws, shoots a little girl right in the face and manages not only to torch a two-story house on fire with his improvised accelerator, but also ignites his own Santa suit (psych!) and suffers third-degree burns while incinerating the structure and burning it to the ground. Can you believe this sucker thought he was going to Canada, eh? All of this fortunately led him to take his own life, sparing us the endless media circus of trials and psychological explanations over the course of many months. But of course he had to go to his brother's house first to do the self-annihilation, thus dragging in a more immediate part of the family when the brother stumbled upon the body. Left a big swath, did he.

It is true, neither of these events reduced the glow of my personal Christmas party one whit. It is only in taking the overview of our society that these things matter. But they do, and reflect rather poorly on the decisions we've chosen to make. Too much emphasis on material things. Too little control of weapons. Too much elevation and exultation of shopping as a substitute for . . . everything else. Too little psychological counseling and no attempt to weed out psychotics before they act. Too much striving for breaking into the black on Black Friday. Such deep, unfathomable blackness that black humor becomes inappropriate. The improbable becomes the norm.

So I say to you: Happy Holidays, and most of all, Happy New Year. Among the many memories I would just as soon discard after the final 24 hours of 2008, this pair of bookends will be the first in my mental trash. It's a Christmas I would just as soon forget.

The Tyranny of Things

Well this could be the entire blog. But I am sure I will find other things to rant about. This blog is all about ranting. And the first rant is about the tyranny of things.

Quite simply put, the question is, do we possess things, or do they possess us, or is ownership some weird balance between being owned and possessing. The larger question might be, "Is the benefit of owning something greater than the burden of responsibility for having it?"

All this has arisen because we are thinking of moving. Although moving is commonplace for young people, it becomes more of a life-defining moment when you reach the age of sixty (or fifty-eight or sixty-five, or whenever it is time for a change;) the contemplation, the very concept of moving becomes a crucible in which your fundamental values are tested. And one of those most certainly is your attachment to things.

Now . . . let's come clean here. I am about as big a 'thing' person as has ever been. I love my video and photo cameras, my cooking implements, my wine collection, my hot tub. My cars. My houses. Stop! Stop! This is getting disgusting already. Let's just say, if we're talking about attachment to things, I might well be the poster boy. Sure, there are far more material people than I, but if it comes to holding up an exemplar of material-free existence, I am not the guy. In fact, I am way back near the end of the line, probably about two places ahead of the bonehead who just bought a Hummer.

That being said, a new current is flowing through our household. The idea has taken root that, after a mere 20 years or so in this one place, it might be time for a different arrangement.

And this radical concept has spawned a whole host of additional thoughts, mostly centered around: "Which of these objects that surround you actually might matter in your next life?" And I don't mean an afterlife; I am not trying to bring my material possessions into my spirit world. I am not dying (other than slowly and inevitably.) Life will go on. So . . . what to bring and what to ditch?

To ditch or not to ditch - - that is the question.

The tyranny of things. Are you the owner or the owned. More to come.